France Says Ma'aleh Adumim is 'Occupied Palestine'

French citizen who lives in Ma'aleh Adumim surprised that his passport says he lives in "Occupied Palestine."

By Elad Benari

First Publish: 11/11/2011, 2:12 AM

Ma'aleh Adumim

Flash 90

A French citizen who lives in Ma’aleh Adumim and recently tried to renew his French passport, received a letter which said that his country of residence in the new passport would be listed as “occupied Palestine.”

The citizen turned to MK Lia Shemtov from the Yisrael Beiteinu party and asked her to take care of the issue with the French authorities.

“I was contacted by a young resident of Ma’aleh Adumim who was surprised to find that his French passport said that he lives in the occupied territory of Palestine,” Shemtov told Arutz Sheva on Thursday.

“It is inconceivable that Ma’aleh Adumim will be listed in the passport as occupied Palestinian territory,” she added. “I turned to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the staff there were also amazed to see that the passport says that Ma’aleh Adumim is part of Palestine, a country which has never even existed.”

Shemtov said, “Foreign Ministry officials promised me they’d contact the French Embassy and the French government to ensure that future similar mistakes do not happen.”

The approval for Ma’aleh Adumim was part of a larger approval of 2,300 new housing units in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem, for which Israel gave the go-ahead as part of sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, after the latter was accepted as a full member nation of UNESCO.

Ma’aleh Adumim, along with the other communities in which construction was approved, is a community which the Netanyahu government has insisted will remain in Israeli hands under any future final status agreement.